Visual content for display, such as content for graphical user interfaces and video games, may be generated by a graphics processing unit (GPU). A GPU may convert two-dimensional or three-dimensional (3D) objects into a two-dimensional (2D) pixel representation that may be displayed.
Point-based rendering of three-dimensional surfaces is a graphics rendering technique in which three-dimensional surfaces may be made up of a group of point primitives (also known as a point cloud). For a three-dimensional surface, a point cloud may be non-uniform distributed samples of the surface. Unlike rendering techniques that utilize triangle primitives, the point primitives utilized in point-based rendering do not include any connective information between point primitives.
Point-based rendering may be useful in the context of three-dimensional scanning Three-dimensional scanning devices may generate a large point cloud (e.g., millions of points) which may be difficult and computationally expensive to convert into a connected set of triangle primitives (e.g., a triangle mesh) that are then used as inputs for subsequent rendering. In contrast, point-based rendering techniques may utilize the raw data produced by three-dimensional scanning devices as input. In this way, point-based rendering techniques may be more efficient than triangle-based rendering techniques in certain applications.